Clean Water In the News

Robert Williams said no untreated sewage has been allowed to bypass the plant since completion of construction there. He just retired as head of the Public Utilities Department. ( THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON ) Zoom | Photo Reprints

By TOM TROY
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Fourteen months after completion of a $48 million addition to the city's wastewater-treatment system, Toledo's Bay View treatment plant no longer dumps raw sewage into the Maumee River.

Although untreated sewage continues to flow through combined sewer outfalls located along the Maumee and Ottawa rivers during heavy rains each year, the raw sewage that once routinely overwhelmed the water treatment plant on North Summit Street is under control.

"We have not had a single untreated bypass since we put this in," said Robert Williams, the newly retired director of the Public Utilities Department, which oversaw the project.

The new facility - known both as the "wet-weather" and "ballasted-flocculation" facility - is the signature project so far of the $450 million, 15-year commitment the city made when it signed a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department in 2002 to end an 11-year lawsuit.

Acting for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department sued Toledo in 1991 over releases of polluted water into the rivers, a violation of the city's permit to dump treated sewage.

The negotiated settlement in U.S. District Court was submitted to Toledo voters in July, 2002. Voters approved the commitment, knowing that it would mean an approximate doubling of sewer rates, then averaging $210 a year, to pay for the sewage projects.

The first phase of the Toledo Waterways Initiative included the ballasted-flocculation facility, a 25-million-gallon retention basin, and a new water tower.

The ballasted-flocculation facility is the largest on line in the nation, according to Mr. Williams. The process removes about 85 percent of solids, and the water is chemically treated to kill bacteria. It then can be legally dumped into the river, but if there is room, it is diverted to the equalization basin to be held until the wet-weather rush is over.

The city has spent $150 million on the Bay View Treatment Plant. It includes the pump room. ( THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON ) Zoom | Photo Reprints

Mr. Williams said the $48 million facility was used about a dozen times this year, treating about 250 million gallons of sewage that otherwise would have been bypassed into the river without treatment. The total bypasses account for a fraction of the Maumee River's annual discharge of 1.3-quadrillion gallons of water.

Evaluation of the adjacent 25-million-gallon basin continues to determine its adequacy. The EPA wanted the city to build a 60 million-gallon basin, but agreed to try the smaller size.

"The EPA has not signed off," Mr. Williams said. "We're still running studies to try to convince them we don't need the other 35 [million gallons]."

So far, the city has spent about $200 million. In addition to $150 million at Bay View, the city has spent money to:

• Replace storm sewers in Point Place and put in a new pumping station to end sewer bypasses into the Ottawa River.
• Construct a 3 million-gallon subterranean holding tank in River Road Park in South Toledo.

Still to be solved is the problem of the 20 percent of the city that is served by combined sewers, which carry both household waste and storm runoff from streets, parking lots, and roofs. The combined storm-sanitary sewers, found in the city's older neighborhoods, were designed to overflow during heavy rains into "outfalls" that dump into the river.

The city's 33 outfalls dump an average of 624 million gallons of untreated runoff and sanitary sewage into the river annually. The worst single offender is an outfall pipe just west of the I-75 bridge in Toledo's old south end.

The next phase of the Toledo Waterways Initiative, to cost $250 million and last 10 years, is aimed at ending the combined sewer overflows.

Environmental watchdogs say Toledo's solution is an important step toward cleaning up the Maumee River and Lake Erie, but not the last one.

"Clearly they've had dozens of untreated overflows still occurring," said Amy Gomberg, environmental advocate with the nonprofit advocacy group Environment Ohio. "They are clearly addressing part of the problem, which is great, but there's a lot more to be done."

She said that in 2005, Toledo contributed over 1 billion gallons of untreated sewage to Lake Erie, third among Ohio cities after Cleveland and Fremont.

Gary Belan, director of the healthy waters campaign American Rivers, a national nonprofit organization, said, "Real progress has been made."

"The upgrades to the plant have been effective and are very beneficial to the river and water quality in general," Mr. Belan said. But he said the ballasted-flocculation process doesn't provide as complete a cleaning as the normal process.

"It's still fairly clean, but not as clean as it would [be] normally," Mr. Belan said. He said the 25 million-gallon basin has helped because it can store a lot of the overflow water for later treatment.

Toledo is one of many cities forced by the federal government to solve the problem of combined sewer overflows. Ms. Gomberg said 80 Ohio communities have combined sewer overflows.

Indianapolis last year agreed to spend $1.86 billion to stop sewer overflows in a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That was the third-highest-cost Clean Water Act settlement addressing combined sewer overflows. It would reduce the volume of Indianapolis' untreated discharges by 7.2 billion gallons in an average year.

Contact Tom Troy at:
tomtroy@theblade.com
or 419-724-6058.